Pauline Perspectives by Nicholas Thomas Wright

Author:Nicholas Thomas Wright
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SPCK

Chapter Twenty

Paul as Preacher: The Gospel Then and Now (2007)

This is the text of the Michael Devlin Lecture delivered on 19 October 2005 at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, Ireland. Originally published in Irish Theological Quarterly 72 (2007): 131–46. Reprinted with permission.

Visits to Ireland are usually special occasions, and this one was no exception. The only problem is that, as with other such trips, my main memory is not of the academic component but of the wonderful hospitality my wife and I enjoyed. As with some other essays written during my time as Bishop of Durham, there was no time for detailed annotation, and I concentrated on trying to summarize large and complex areas of Paul’s thought and preaching into an accessible format.

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[131] What was Paul doing when he was ‘preaching’ the gospel? He was a pioneer missionary, whose message must have sounded very Jewish and very politically subversive. He was announcing news that was challenging at a public, not merely a personal, level. He was telling a story about the whole world, and about its creator revealing himself in a dramatically unexpected way. In Jesus, this God had put the world to rights, and was summoning all people to join in the community of those who hailed Jesus, not Caesar, as the true Lord. To announce this gospel in today’s world means confronting postmodernity, postsecularism and the new forms of empire with the same challenging word, the overarching narrative of new creation, and the generation of fresh community, to let today’s Caesars know that Jesus is Lord.

When England won the Rugby Union World Cup, nearly two years ago now, I was at a conference in Atlanta, Georgia. When I heard the result it was six o’clock in the morning, Atlanta time. I was thrilled to bits and eager to share the good news. But nobody in the hotel had the slightest idea what rugby was, let alone how important England’s victory was. I tried it out on the conference later that morning: I began my lecture by saying, ‘I’ve got good news!’ (which woke them all up) and then explaining ‘England have just won the Rugby World Cup!’ And the blank looks said it all. I might as well have walked out onto O’Connell Street in Dublin and announced to a startled audience that Hang Chow province had just won the Chinese inter-provincial table tennis tournament.

That picture gives you a sharp idea of what Paul was doing in his preaching. By way of introducing my theme, let me put it like this: when Paul arrived in, say, Thessalonica and announced that Jesus was Lord, it must have felt like someone telling an audience about a game they didn’t play being won by a team they didn’t know. Announcing that the crucified and risen Jesus of Nazareth is Israel’s true king and therefore the world’s true [132] Lord would make no sense at all to a first-century pagan. It was bad enough for a first-century Jew; but Paul was

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